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Ate: May 5, 2006 Published: May 7, 2006 $$ This week, we figured that since it was Cinco de Mayo, we ought to go and check out a Mexican restaurant. Since this is a holiday that has come to rival Saint Patrick's Day for its revelry, the two of us should go out, enjoy ourselves and have a good time, right? We knew where the biggest crowd was going to be, and the decided not to deal with that mass of people. Instead, we headed to a fairly new restaurant called Garcia's Southwest Grill and Cantina. We were fairly early, but the crowd was already growing. A local radio station was getting set up for a remote broadcast, and a hot-pants and tight t-shirt wearing young lady greeted us before we even got to the door and offered us some beers (not free, of course). Everyone was ready for a party. Our evening started off in a mediocre fashion. The waitress immediately pegged us as not being heavy drinkers and thus, not worthy of her time. She told me that the chips and salsa were around the corner if we wanted any. Curious, I went over to where she pointed, expecting to find some sort of salsa bar. What I found instead was just a regular waiters' station, and not a particularly clean one at that. I shrugged and helped myself to some chips, salsa and queso. The salsa was unlike any the two of us had ever seen, and I don't mean that in a good way. It wasn't particularly spicy or flavorful, and it contained whole tomatoes that we had to cut up. Or rather, would have had to cut up if we'd had any silverware. We didn't have any napkins either, not until I went up to the bar and got some of their small cocktail napkins. With the salsa practically unscoopable, we were looking forward to our appetizer, their Pollo Poco Chimichangas. The waitress dropped them off and dashed away before we could ask her for some silverware. Fortunately, this was finger food - a basket of little mini chicken chimichangas served with a jalapeno cream cheese sauce. Dry, uninspired and tasting like they came from the frozen food aisle, the cream cheese was the best part of them. When the waitress brought our entrees, we managed to hold on to her attention long enough to ask for some silverware so that we could eat. My wife's taco burro looked good, but didn't live up to the looks. According to her, it was dry and bland - not at all something she'd get again. At least, I think she was saying that, but I'm not totally sure. A low-rent three-piece band had cranked up so loud that she had to yell directly into my ear for me to hear her. My own dinner was a mistake caused by not actually reading the entrée's description. I had ordered the chili relleno with the assumption that I would be getting a poblano pepper stuffed with seasoned beef and cheese, batter coated and fried. What I actually got was simply a pepper with cheese baked in and over it. No meat, no seasoning, no batter, no frying. Words cannot express my disappointment with my dinner. To best illustrate the point, for the first time in a while, neither my bride nor I brought our leftovers home with us. We got ourselves out of Garcia's as quickly as possible. In our younger days, a high-octane, hard drinking Cinco de Mayo crowd like we saw there might have been a lot of fun. But being a bit more settled down, we did not have a good time at all. We had thought a Mexican restaurant would be the place for a fun dinner. Boy were we wrong. |
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